The Psychology of Quality and More

Joseph Juran

Joseph Juran is another of the quality gurus, perhaps most famous for the Pareto Chart and the accompanying Pareto Principle. Like several other gurus, he had a long working life, starting work in 1926 and retiring in 1998. The Juran Institute now carries on his work.

Juran is often seen as 'The Quality Professionals's guru' as he put much focus into the detail of doing the job. He was a early proponent of benchmarking and quality costing, amongst other techniques.

He has one of the most succinct definitions of quality: 'Fitness for use', which gave an early external focus on meeting customer needs.

One of his main points was the 'quality trilogy' of:

• Quality Planning: from customer needs to product/service to meet needs.
• Quality Improvement: developing and improving capable processes.
• Quality Control: making the process work in normal operating conditions with minimal interruptions.

Although he wrote many books, he is most famous for his 1951 epic door-stop, The Quality Control Handbook, which is still in print and in its fifth edition. Like Deming and others, he saw management as being responsible for many of the woes and his 1964 classic, Managerial Breakthrough, is also still in print. Some of his points for management include:

• Personally preside over the Quality Council, the top level council that coordinates the quality initiative.
• Take training in how to manage for quality.
• Preside over the preparation of the vision statement and policies.
• Participate in setting quality goals and deploying those goals.
• Provide the needed resources for the initiative.
• Participate in establishing new measures of performance.
• Review those performances against the goals.
• Be there when recognition is awarded.
• Revise the award system to reflect the changes imposed by the quality initiative.

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